Fishing Forum

I live in East TN and was fishing today on Cherokee Lake and managed to hook a 41" 35lb Blue Catfish..On nothing more than 8lb test line and a white fluke.

This is my second blue catfish in the past 2 weeks. The first one was a 36" 21lb.

Anyways, I had a friend fillet the 21lb catfish for me, but he didn't get as much meat off it as I had hoped he would (I know you only get about 1/3 of the original weight, but there looked to be a lot of meat left on the fish), so I figured I would do this new one myself as to not waste any of the fish.

I checked out this video of an easy way to fillet a catfish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CrV6-Pn-jc

It seemed like a pretty easy and straightforward way to do it without too much hassle.

Anyone have any tips? I know to cut away the red/darker meat to get rid of the 'fishy' taste, but anything else you might be able to help me with would be much appreciated.

Here are a couple of pictures of the catfish:




Thanks!
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The best advice I can give you is the way I do it.

Put a nail in a tree, or hang some heavy duty wire from a tree. Make a cut all the way around the fish at the base of the head/skull. Try to make a shallow incision all the way around.

Get a pair of pliers or skinners

Rip the skin off the catfish in a fast manner. If you do it right, the entire skin from the head down should come right off. Sometimes you will hit snags with the fins.

Soak the fish in fresh water for a few minutes.

Now, I just fillet them as I would a crappie. Start at the tail, work the spine all the way up to the gills/head area.

You should be able to pull off two huge fillets.

Cut out the stomach/ribs area fully.

You said something about the darker red meat, which is right, it is pretty gamey. Another thing you want to look out for is excess fatty tissue that is usually white/cream/yellow. This also tastes nasty.

You should be able to quarter each of the two large fillets, or trim to a size of your liking.
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Great catch! Unfortunately I'm not much of a catfish eater, so I can't lead you in the right direction when it comes to filleting it. But good luck.
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